The story is simple, yet funny and well executed. The animation and amazing, considering how few resources were available to create it. Big Congrats to the team.

"Big Buck Bunny" is the first Creative Commons film to ever be featured on the FrostWire welcome screen. It's also the first download to be featured in 2009 to the p2p community and received more than 40,000 downloads just from a href="http://www.frostwire.com/">FrostWire & a href="http://www.frostclick.com/">FrostClick alone.

Original Review at FrostClick.com

As a previous poster mentioned, the DVD is 8GB and requires a DL blank. However if you mount the ISO and remaster it, it will come down to something you can write on a SL blank.

I do think they should have removed the other formats (mov, avi) from the DVD as they are available elsewhere. Making the DVD DL may make people buy the pressed version, but if they really want to spread the Blender software which is included on the DVD-ROM, they should have left out the other formats and let it fit in 4.4GB.

"One of the ISOs is in PAL format, the other in NTSC format. Otherwise they have the same files and movies."

The DVD contents as declared above is wrong. While it's true that the DVD video content is the same, the DVD data are unique per disc.

The PAL disc has all the production files (models, textures, rigs, sets, animations.. downloadable here: http://graphicall.org/bbb/index.php ), the script (original and breakdown), tutorials, simplified .blend files and the movie itself in HD in several formats.

The NTSC disc has a lot of making-of content: artwork, photos, videos, animatic of the original script, live-edit of animatic+blocked+blender view+final render, test renders, etc.

All those extras are a *GREAT* resource for any 3D artist.

BTW, I'm in the credits because I pre-ordered the DVD before they started the production.

i thought this was a grate short film. this was made with totally free software. compared to the $2k + programs used by dreamworks, i'd like to see anyone do better with less.

"Poor voice acting, the actors seem to make no sound at all."

lol, that's because they don't. there isn't any dialog like most shorts.

I and my roommate have tried 3 different dvd burners and they have all failed. How about braking the iso in half to do 2 single dvds instead of one big iso for a duel layered dvd

A proof-of-concept that free and open source software can produce quality professional products. If anyone doubts the quality of F/OS software, showing them this should convince them.

Regarding an earlier reviewer's negative review of voice acting, there are no true speaking parts in the film, only some chipmunk-like sounds from the rodents. The overall story is nice for a short subject, the revenge of the mocked and teased. The easter-egg ending is an earthy treat for those who have the patience to watch the closing credits.

The software programs do an excellent job of rendering, and the movie withstands several viewings without suffering any loss of quality. Blender, Inkscape, GIMP.

Now that the proof-of-concept is out, it's time for producers to take some initiative and save money on their budgets by taking advantage of the software available in the open source community.

smaller version located at:
http://www.archive.org/details/Blenders_Big_Buck_Bunny
it's not an iso but a vob. burned well in my OEM version of nero but needed to update to 5.1 surround sound.

p.s it's in ntsc format

These disc are open content.
All files needed to remake the movie are on the dvd's.
If you just want to watch the movie then visit the official bigbuckbunny.org site, dont bother downloading the dvd. Or type bigbuckbunny in youtube.
If you want to see one file to make a scene from bbb then again just visit the download section of bbb.org, all files are available as a download.
Dvds are also for sale in the blender.org e-shop.

By buying the dvds you dont buy the right to watch the movie (thats free) but buy into the development of the software to create movies like these by anybody who wants too. Not only anybody who can affort to.


My review to the movie:
Great animation.
Good visual quality.
Intermediate editing.
Poor story.
Nice music, maybe to bombastic/ not slapstick enough.
Poor voice acting, the actors seem to make no sound at all.


My review to the project:
Great project. Maybe a little too much time put in to justify the result. Love to see more comming out of the Blender Institute.

The DVDs have "outtakes", behind-the-scenes movies, the art used in the production of the movie, and more.

Anyone who finds the ISOs to be too much to download should visit http://bigbuckbunny.org/ (the official website) and purchase a copy of the DVDs. Then they can get full-quality copies of all the materials distributed here without downloading any of it. This helps the artists who were so kind enough as to make the movie, all of the added features, and help develop Blender as free software (free as in freedom). We shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

You can play the ISO DVD image files with VideoLAN Client (see http://videolan.org/vlc/) without burning them to a DVD; everything will work except the DVD-ROM features (just like on a DVD player). There are numerous programs to mount an ISO file as though it were a disc to get to the DVD-ROM features.

review 3:

Thanks for the update - great, I'd love to see all the "making of" material, too.

Perhaps you should offer a basic version, with just the film and a few out-takes/background bits.

As it is, the huge DVD images currently on offer are:

- Well over 10 times the size that are necessary to provide the film itself and a few extras.

- So large as to be inaccessible to people who have draconian bandwidth caps and/or lower speed connections and/or without the wherewithal to make their own DVD from the other file formats available. The beauty of providing an ISO image of a DVD video is that it makes it _simple_ for people who are film lovers, but not tech whizzes.

- As noted in my first review (below) the huge size of these images, requires that users acquire and burn larger DVD dual-layer discs. While standard 4.7 GB (DVD5) discs are widely available and quite inexpensively so, DL (dual layer) discs are often not available at all in many areas, except in some specialist stores and at a huge price premium. At the prices they sell at, it's also a huge kick in the pants when one gets the inevitable bad burn, and has to start over.

- The DVD burners provided with many computers, even those only 2 or 3 years old, are often incapable of burning DL DVDs.

review 2:

As a reality check...

The full HD 1920x1080 pixel MP4 file, available (along with other resolutions) at
http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/download/
... is only 884 MB in size (albeit with far more efficient compression than the old MPEG2 for DVD format).

Just saw the film in standard definition from that page... rates 4 stars **** in my book, though obviously I can't rate the DVD version yet.

review 1:

There's no way that a standard definition, 10 minute movie should be so large as these disk images (7.73 GB for NTSC, 7.51 GB PAL): big enough to require a dual-layer DVD .

I just compressed a 10 minute 28 second long film for DVD, using very-high-quality 7.2 Mbits/sec video and 192 kbps audio. The total file size of the muxed MPEG2 file is only 557 MB in size.